More fuckwittery from Eva Wiseman, Observer

It's like buying alcohol - you're allowed to buy it if you look over 18, right?

Bailey, I appreciate the help but all your definitions are based in biology.

The test you proposed (which I checked you were serious about) is that the intended 2010 meaning ties to how people in social situations would perceive or perhaps describe others based on how they look.

Do you really think that’s how legislators intended the law to work?

That a pregnant woman has maternity protection unless she has a beard, say? Or that a man with DSDs might not be protected from sex discrimination laws?

How likely is it that the cocktail-party test is what lawmakers meant to rest this legislation on?

It just simply means female is a broad category with many sub categories. Like water can be ice, steam, sea water etc.

But its distinguishing features between male & female humans that's of relevance here. And it clearly isn't just reproductive traits in everyday settings

But that would render the dictionary pretty useless

That's the thing - once they start off on the word wankery, what's notable is that on the one hand it becomes totally irrelevant to "female" or "woman" - because you could start off on the same idiocy for every single word. But they're not.

You can tell they know exactly what a woman is because they're only doing it for women's words...

A laser focus on trying to undermine their very, very concrete and real target.

If you take "not' as a relation, I suppose! But that would render the dictionary pretty useless as every definition using the phrase 'relating to' could mean literally anything: the thing itself and everything in a not-relation to it.

And Mem Web is more specific:

sex
1 of 2
noun
ˈseks

1
a
: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures

b
: the sum of the structural, functional, and sometimes behavioral characteristics of organisms that distinguish males and females

I have to say this seems to support my case far more than yours.

Your argument is that pre-2010 a “female changing room” meant one “belonging or relating to the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs”.

Well yeah the inference is anything can be categorised as female if it relates to the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs.

D'oh.

"Relating to" here covers "female toilets" or "female sports", which don't actually produce eggs or give birth themselves - they're related to the sex that does.

You aren’t being serious with this one, I assume. Your test for the meaning of sex rests in whether people check each others’ chromosomes at parties?

I certainly am because its what we do. My meaning of sex is based on distinguishing characteristics between males & females people use in everyday settings. So both reproductive & secondary sex characteristics qualify.

The main way English courts determine ordinary usage is with dictionaries. Pre-2010 (and now) the main dictionary definition of sex was based on biology, becuase that is its ordinary meaning.

And yet this is not only what people did long before 2010. And Cambridge acknowledges associations BTW. "relating"

female adjective (SEX)

B1
belonging or relating to the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs:

No its not the correct usage or helpful although I get the inference. Many GC's don't believe in discrimination of trans people, accept their disposition as biological human variation & just want private spaces whilst others seek to remove any legitimacy to their identity claiming their disposition is a dangerous deluded sexual perversion.

And the term 'trans genocide' isn't widely used by trans supporters.

You aren’t being serious with this one, I assume. Your test for the meaning of sex rests in whether people check each others’ chromosomes at parties?

The main way English courts determine ordinary usage is with dictionaries. Pre-2010 (and now) the main dictionary definition of sex was based on biology, becuase that is its ordinary meaning.

I still think this is a bit of a tangent with respect to the main SC argument, which was about GRCs, but it’s a tangent that does not support your case.

Would you consider the idea of a trans genocide to be a moral panic?

Do you believe you see this issue clearly?

I'm here aren't I? But you did not persuade me….yet.

Are you immune to low information and personal bias?

Do you believe you see this issue clearly?

The point is this wasn't an organic broad grassroots grievance. That activists needed to 'tell' the broader population that there was a serious problem that they weren't aware of or didn't care about before ought to tell you there was no problem….until it was astro turfed.

Yes some left of centre/centrists are vulnerable to moral panics too & immigration is another example. Low information voters & personal biases are present on all sides of the political spectrum.

The point is this was never a broad grass roots issue but a small fringe one that's contained generationally. It only got traction because of its convenience to right wing political aspirations applying their powerful media connections.

"self-identified sense of gender?"
No.
Ordinary meaning can be theoretical usage or practical usage. We don't usually distinguish males from females in social settings by checking gametes & chromosomes. We use surface level associations of cis people. In this sense ordinary meaning of 'sex' is inextricably linked to every day usage that usually isn't reproductive biological traits.

The presuure on government policy, certainly in the U.K, has been down to committed activists, some of whom have since gone on to form a really impressive campaign structure...which includes organisations such as 'Sex Matters' 'Legal Feminist' 'Fair Play for Women' ( a largely left wing women's campaign group) and so on. A grassroots movement of women's groups and feminists......who had been meeeting in each other's homes and at secret locations for years. Secret, because for years they would be targeted by violent TRAS and then have their venues cancel on them at the last minute.

It just so happens that women are also journalists, trade union activists, doctors, mental health workers, politicians, lawyers, teachers and professors....they have skills and they are not stupid 'karens' as many like to imagine.

You seem unable to understand that many good people on the left just reject the premises of your argument.

They are not idiots, or being misled, or fooled by “the right”, they are educated, intelligent people who won’t play along with your nonsense.

You are late to this forum, but many of us have been here for quite some time. You only came here because of its latter notoriety amongst trans activists and its success in getting the issue into the public domain.

Yes. Although remember at that time, marriage could only be between a man and a woman. The EA 2010 “contains an exemption for gender reassignment discrimination in the context of solemnisation of marriage, which refers expressly to the effects of section 9(1) as "[the person's] gender has become the acquired gender under the Gender Recognition Act 2004" para 157.

It is this sort of thing that makes me so cross when people blithely say that the SC judgment was wrong, when they clearly have neither read it nor taken the trouble to work through the painstaking analyses within it.

Just seven years ago we were not permitted to discuss this issue anywhere but here. The Labour party were demanding " No Debate". There was no discusion in either parliament or in any media. People were arrested, sacked, tyrannised, ejected and banned for just stating the truth of biology, and for wanting to preserve women's sex based protections.

in fact journalists from many media were blacklisted, including journalists who had worked for The Guardian. Janice Turner was the first journalist to really cover the issue in any meaningful way. ( and she's a dedicated Labour party member)

Sex wasn’t defined until 2025

John Stuart Mills wrote The Subjection of Women in 1869 and he refers to the female sex and male sex through out the booklet.